This record of a plead­ing in an eq­uity case ini­ti­ated in the court of Chancery over the lord­ship of Tat­ten­hall, Cheshire, is held at The Na­tional Archives (C3/54/ 11)

Hugh is at­ten­dant to Sir Richard Sackville (c1507–1566), privy coun­cil­lor. This dates the doc­u­ment to be­tween 20 Novem­ber 1558, when Sackville got the post, and Sackville’s death on 21 April 1566.

Ralph

Ralph Dut­ton of Hat­ton (c1515– 1582) granted this lease, so may be quite closely re­lated to Hugh. He is the son of Sir Piers Dut­ton (c1480–1545) and both should be re­searched.

Ge­orge

A lease for three lives was usu­ally granted to three close rel­a­tives. When the first died the lease went to the next. Hugh’s brother Ge­orge took up the lease in 1553 but he has died, so Hugh is tak­ing up the lease.

Prop­erty clue

Hugh lives in the City of Lon­don but holds a lease in Tat­ten­hall in Cheshire. We can now try to dis­cover which Dut­tons pre­vi­ously held land there to un­cover Hugh’s parent­age.

El­iz­a­beth

El­iz­a­beth is likely Hugh’s sis­ter. Know­ing who El­iz­a­beth’s hus­bands are, we can try to work out who Hugh is.

Robert Abe­w­marise

Robert Abe­w­marise has il­le­gally oc­cu­pied the land be­tween Ge­orge’s death and Hugh re­al­is­ing that he has a right to the lease. It may be help­ful to dis­cover who Robert is.